The next evolution of Roguelites is finally here by Jakub Remiar

It's something that you get from this run and all the runs suddenly makes complete sense of like really really work for them because again like you're getting these super good cards that like this can be your next best deck that you can build out of it. It's perfect. And compared to something like Survivor IO where you always know like which tech you following you either get it or it's rolling the dice [music] with those coins with the two and a half gamers the midnight crew talking UA advers and game [music] design too mate feel bringing the insight we're rocking those vibes till the early daylight [music] master eyes on the prize tracking data through the cyerspace skies feel stacks [music] colors like a wizard. in disguise. Jack crafter realms lift us to the highest. Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey stick got your back. [music] Ads are beautiful. They like the way. Click it fast. Don't delay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. [music]

Aha. [music] Hello. Hello. This is Gamers again. another solo episode that we're going to do today. This will be pretty hardcore one because what I want to talk today is pretty much the state of Rog light games. Not only like I would say the next evolution rather than the state. Yeah, because I've been tinkering with this for quite some time now. pretty much searching for some answers and going around few games and some solutions where I really like the rogide genre. We all know it's extremely popular just as we covering pretty much a rog light game every single month now uh from like I guess start of survivor IO or vampire survivors. Uh yeah, so this channel definitely not going anyway. The big question again of course

is how it's going to evolve. Uh yeah, I've been saying this for quite some time, but again, just want to kind of do a solo one on this because yeah, this is getting finally I think streamlined and we'll see. Anyway, let's go and get into it. What we have in mind? So the main problem in my opinion with the whole genre if we go let's say one of the most typical uh examples of a rog light game would be survivor IO really the big one that really which is pretty much the yeah layman's mobile version of Empire Survivors where we have our hero it's this kind of shoot them up setup the core doesn't really matter in in this case honestly what matters is the rogide system so We kill the enemies. Maybe let's go a little bit further here. Yeah. So, we kill the enemies. There's this kind of repeating XP bar. You collect uh coins [snorts] or whatever these crystals. You level up and you

choose some of the abilities and you do this. You pretty much do your run, pick up your build. Your build is kind of at the same all the time because yeah, there's randomization and stuff around that where again these things can change of course, but in the end you're trying to follow your strategy because your gear is built towards a build. So you going for I don't know this specific setup, this evolution, so on so forth. You continue, you do your run, you kill the boss or whatever is pretty much at the end and then you get your rewards which is for instance this. Then your run ends and you need to start from scratch and the only thing that's kind of the rog light part which is like you don't lose everything. You can get some stuff into it are the resources. That's why it's rog light not ro like as the game rogue which was the one with like you would reset everything that's stuff from scratch. Yeah. And that's it pretty much. And this is the problem because there's not enough of a transition of

like progression moving forward, the accumulation of stuff. Like of course there's resources and everything, but you need to repeat this over and over again. And the worst part for me is that again, you get to this point where you have this like giant invincible build where you like killing everything. You're super powerful. You work hard for it for like 20 minutes, like 18 minutes like you see here, and then it's gone. it it like goes away and could be very lucky could be like only at this part of the run you got this that D it's it's gone like we reset that so this is the one of the main problems that I think this this kind of genre suffers from if we continue of course we have the one of the biggest answers here on the block which is Uma Musu which Umaume does is that as you train the girl the horse girl at the end of her year you get an imprint of the drone and then you can use her in other modes of the game which is the PVP mode the daily mode or

whatever multiple the game is geared towards you creating different kind of imprints of or like I don't know even how to call it but pretty much the thing that you do during your run is saved and then it's packaged as some kind of character that you can use later which is that like our all effort which like yeah these takes like 30 minutes to finish like don't get me wrong, to get through [clears throat] this whole process. Like, it's kind of tiring even though we go like super fast and skip all the races and everything. So, we get this character, all the roles and all the randomness and all the right decisions and bonuses and everything to get this packaged and then we can use it later. We can use it as a parent. We can use it in PvP. We can use it in daily missions. We can use it in the the cup. The game runs these specific tournaments every month where you get like and people literally build these for these specific use cases like they go to extreme lengths to kind of get the specific ability, specific stats, everything. It gives so much longevity

to as a progression. But yeah, this is the ultimate solution. The problem with the solution, it's extremely complicated. It's Japanese game. It's one of those few games [snorts] that actually made it into the western market in the original form. Yeah, heads off to these guys, but let's not be kidding ourselves. It's very, very complicated. I like it. Lots of people like it, but mainstream market would like it. This is not mainstream material. But the idea and everything, it's it's great. So if we move forward, let's move to the other game that we just covered recently, which is Scow Zero Nightmare, which currently is fairing pretty okayish. I would say they're doing still something like 130, 120 KD. Of course, there will be a bump, right? I guess during the time you watch this because there's going to be a new gacha character release. You know, these things gacha games go in spikes because this is pretty much Hong Kai style progression. So yeah, that's that's not that big of a problem. Even if you use the active users, it's kind of still kind of

stable. Let's not kid ourselves. This is still driven mainly by Japan. So yeah, it's like that's how it is. Not much sense to it. Also, if you go to revenue, revenue is still US first, but again, only by a small margin over Japan and South Korea. So yeah, you see the countries are still making Asian game. Anyway, but the thing that I want to talk about regarding them as we didn't really cover in our review of the game that well is actually how they do the imprints. I think here we have a much more streamlined solution and we're getting there. It's still kind of hard again, but we're getting there. I think we're just one step away from Western game implementing it properly. So what we have here is that we have these characters typical waifuss as as always like nothing rel to it and these characters this is basically an continuation slight the spire for those who didn't know. So this is a deck builder game basically you have these characters and these characters have their like starting card stats. So you

have your starting cards you have your other cards and then like these can evolve so on so forth and then you can change those so on so forth. So, as you progress during the the rog light modes of the game, which are either mission, sorry, not not missions, sorry, not missions, the chaos one where you actually, you know, deck build your your deck. You are able to remove cards, duplicates, like do some like pretty much bread and butter deck building with it. If you finish this run, this run is then saved as save data and then the save data can be used in all the other main modes of the game such as main missions, the battle missions, the simulation, which simulation is basically your daily grind for resources. You spend energy here. So if I go here again, whatever this one, you see that I can select the save data of my characters and like pick one that I

do. If I go into the missions, sorry, the the Rog light one, that's the chaos one. Uh, yeah, if I pick one, you see that I'm not selecting these because these start from the default deck. So, we're not selecting that. But again, most of the game is done with the save data and only few parts, the rogide ones are the ones we start from scratch. Even though they're really the most important ones, but like yeah, let's not kid ourselves. So, how this works here? So we have a characterist taken here and let's go to her save data. So this is again an imprint like it's something comparable to umamus and it's much more expanded because it's not only the deck that you have built there the cards there it's also artifacts that you have collected there are three slots which is very important but we're getting there. This is pretty much the casual version because like you have artifacts we cover collected those. That's great. Why not? Uh, and then there are the cards. As you see, you can have very different

combinations of cards. For instance, here we have just six cards, which means this deck is much more faster. We have here eight cards. You see that I basically duplicated some of the cards. Or we can have these. I don't think so. I have it here on this character. Let me show you another character. Yeah, for instance, here we have even nine cards. And there are even special cards that are neutral that are outside of this character like base or advanced cards and you can add them into your deck with just numerous combinations and possibilities how to kind of run this. But again, it's this kind of imprint that you see here. There's there's many of them like lots of them. They have this kind of a base rating of how strong they are. So again, the more more higher you go, the better they are. Let's go back and you see how again this can be modified to your like cookie cutter build or whatever because for instance in this one the one that I'm using currently I removed a lot of cards from the deck. So for instance you see that her base cards I don't have the shield

anymore. I don't have this two two energy card that like yeah it's kind of useless for her stuff like that. So if we go here you see that I had this like let's say this new one. This is like the evolved version. with epiphany. And what happened? I actually have two of those because you can duplicate those. Same goes for this like zero energy dark. You see they replicated. So what I actually did, I like threw out the cards and then the good cards that I got, I even multiplied so I can get more of them into my hand, which is perfect. This is how it should be played. So, and and again this combo that I have here I can then use in different modes of the game because I work so hard on it like it took a lot of time. It took literally like the run took nearly an hour to finish. So, if I go again either in the missions or either in the simulations. Yeah. Where we go here for instance. I

think there should be some new unlock stuff. Uh where we are? There we are. Yeah. So if I go here again we have the say data angle and even know this can have auto play and I can then again use this. So it's extremely valuable and it's really good that you can again this this takes like a lot of RNG also because when I'm building the deck you need to have special occasions of like a the game needs to give you this specific drop of a character like again like it randomly chooses which card to evolve. needs to drop for your main character. You need to invest a lot of resources into it, yada yada yada. Like, you know, it takes time. It's not just like, okay, I just build this deck and like it's so easy. No, it's not. There's lots of RNG which again prolongs the time until you get the deck. But again, it's something that you get from this run and all the runs suddenly makes complete sense of like really really work for them because again like you're getting these super

good cards that like this can be your next best deck that you can build out of it. It's perfect. And compared to something like Survivor IO where you always know like which deck you following, you either get it or don't whatever. Here it's much more on the much more like you know sunken cost fallacy or basically like you're much more invested into the run because again it could be the run that like give you the best cards or even like even better than the cards that I have now which could replace my deck. So you really really want it to succeed and again we have another mechanic of this kind of rogide run imprint which is a little bit more casualized because it's on different core but again it's one of the answers of like we don't reset the build of the character. We can still use it in different like instances of the game and different modes. What we have here because again this is slight despire uh core gameplay. Therefore, we need to adjust it for it because those are the cards and everything. Yeah, this is just the deck builder. But again, it's not unheard of that like even in current

form, let's say survivor IO could implement the same same setup. I don't I don't see a problem with it. Like you finish your run, you save it, and then you can use in different modes. again very specific ones only of course not the main one or whatever is is the progression rogide one but you could use it like they they could use it I don't see a problem with that like they can implement this feature my guess is that as we go forward we're going to see more and more of these especially for the mobile games ones because if we take even like some of the games that been just trending on the steam chart that we covered recently either Mega Bonk or the B one rogue light like what they did with this whole kind of evolution thing here. Yeah. Here with this kind of fision fusion and evolution where you collect the skills and like mutate them into it. Again, it's even more advanced what these other guys are doing. But again, they don't save the run. You need to start from scratch always. You get some progression overlap with these

characters. They get like unlock new skills, new slots. But again, that build that you last time, which was the awesome one, the best one. Yeah, you can't use it anywhere else, which in my my opinion is yeah, like a missed opportunity because like these things kind of work so well in my opinion. And the best kind of example like why this system is so sturdy and why I think it will be eventually like could become mainstream with the rogide genre like to have this kind of imprint mechanic pull into it. Here's again Uamus because umamusume itself like last six months you can see they're pretty consistent. Yeah, it's not anymore 50% revenue outside of Japan. It's like literally 51% revenue inside of Japan. But still if we go again it's gacha based. So like you these these things kind of just come and go revenue wise. Yeah, they're doing pretty well. Let's do let's say last yeah 12 months but again let's do 6 months because like

it's just 6 months in the west that's why so they do pretty consistently good like 30 million a month. Yep, that that's that's perfect. And uh the active user base is actually increasing. If we go here, um yeah, so once the again the US version kicked in, you can see how it's been fairing pretty well. So it's not a problem. It's also don't uh forget that the game is also on Steam where it is still pulling quite serious numbers where the DA is pretty stable of something like 20K a day. That's not bad for a free-to-play mobile game on Steam. So, yeah, it's it's getting pretty good traction and you see how strong this mechanic and the setup is with the game itself. Even though the core is of course very unique and everything. Muma Musuma is pretty much nearing what 2 billion in overall lifetime revenue on mobile. So yep it proves a lot that like

again this mechanic just needs to be streamlined. So we are waiting pretty much for empires and puzzles to kind of umamus puzzle and dragons. So again this can be implement like in my opinion this could perfectly enrich hab's template. So you could use those imprints overrun like all these setups like they don't have a problem with implementing it's one of the main features there that could work pretty well again can be very casual but also like just like a different setup of rog light mode and rog light genre itself to kind of wrinkle it around of these mechanics. If we go again into Kell Zero, they have it as one of the core features of the game here. It's really really core in Umamus, I wouldn't say it's like it's also core, but making the girls is still much more important than using them later. You can skip this if you want. Like you can PVP the events and tournaments, they're kind of more playerdriven, but the main bulk

of the game, you can do this here. You need to do it even for the main game. Like there's no PVP basically. So, it's one more step towards being more prominent of a mechanic and going more to the center of the course. Again, a little bit more streamlined, little bit more, I guess, casualization or like making it more easier to understand probably with a different core because slight spire deck building core is kind of pretty hardcore by itself. So, we'll see. But uh yeah, I'm definitely guessing that this is not the last time and the last game that we covered that is using a mutation of this like rog light imprint mechanic and I'm guessing that the next six to 3 months we'll see more I don't know if RPGs but like different games using this because the rogide is super popular. As I said, we're pretty much covering a new hit rogide every single month. Either it comes from steam or it comes from the the mobile stores. hobby is having three games in Soul lunch which I rode even

now on chat. They pretty much turned the Clash Quest the old uh killed super supercell game the puzzler into Rogue Light again. So we'll see. There's definitely stuff for iteration. But it's really interesting to me like how these dynamics kind of continue and evolve some of the genres because from again by doing these iterations you are able to literally hit gold like a gold mine because again if you push it very easily again you don't need to rement everything from scratch. You just reinvent these 20 30% of the game which creates a completely different game and that's your biggest USB advantage and you know you break the market like Umamusum did. So yeah, we'll see. I'm definitely looking out forward. This was the update from the rog light genre and its evolution and I guess it's comic evolution. So again, looking forward to more games and more rog light games with imprint systems. Let's call it imprint system. That would be like a good good genre definition that we'll be covering

that we will be definitely covering next year. I'm guessing two to three games for sure. It's going to happen. Anyway, this was it. See you on the next one. Join the Slack if you any questions on this. Feel free to share those or ask me there directly. Happy for any feedback. And yep, see you around. Ciao.
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